Partnerships to Solve Community Problems

Welcome to CABPortal

CABPortal is the official home of the NSF-supported research project: Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in STEM Learning (NSF DUE Award #1914869). CABPortal is also a repository for past projects and ongoing research that uses interdisciplinary collaborations and community engaged learning models. Faculty, admins, and community partners can use CABPortal to share information regarding interdisciplinary projects both related to and distinct from CABPortal's Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in STEM Learning research project.

Creating an account on CABPortal enables users to submit new projects and review existing projects. CABPortal has recently implemented a built-in point system to encourage user engagement on the site. Points are awarded for submitting new projects, citations, and influence.

Learn more about how the points system works.

Community Collaboration

Coordinates synergistic efforts between educators and their communities.

Interdisciplinary Effort

Fosters collaboration between STEM students and students in other knowledge domains.

New Pedagogy

Supports a novel and multi-disciplinary approach to community-engaged learning.

Framework

Utilizes a collaborative model for devising technology-based solutions to community problems.

CABPortal's current research project

CAB (Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in Stem Learning) Research Project

Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in Stem Learning (NSF DUE Award #1914869) was conceived at The College of New Jersey to meet the growing need for STEM-literate professionals across a range of disciplines.

Classes from different disciplines - STEM and non-STEM - are paired to work under the guidance of their instructors with a community partner on a community-identified problem. After experiencing their first partnership, each participating instructor commits to partner with one new colleague and one new community partner on a second community-identified problem.

This continued application of the model offers a way to build a community of practice around collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and community-engaged learning, as well as conduct ongoing research on best practices using this model.

Our Spotlight Project: SOAP

SOAP (Students Organizing Against Pollution) is a software development project that tests our hypothesis that collaborations between computer science students, non-CS students and a community partner are an effective way to boost computational thinking

The goal of the SOAP project is to create an online resource that provides more accurate, accessible and comprehensive information about neighborhood-level environmental conditions in Trenton, New Jersey than is currently available through local state and federal databases.